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It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

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Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#271

Post by taneq »

mikk14 wrote: post #230
energy123 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anyone who supports both ideas at the same time. Are you saying that philosophers do? Most philosophers are materialists or computational functionalists, while being monists. This means they aren't dualists, and it means they do not adopt the supernatural explanation. But they are careful not to rule out dualism. There's this pattern I've observed in discussions about philosophy. First there's a rejectio…

I don't know if this is discussed by actual serious philosophers, but consider the issue of "mind uploading." I have seen very staunch monists seriously discussing that, if you were to produce a complete digital copy of your brain -- copying any possible information to the most minute synapse -- then you effectively "uploaded" yourself into a computer and can live a digital life. These people believe this while at th…

The ‘you’ that wakes up tomorrow is a whole separate entity from you right now, unless you want to concede that identity is a path variable and that whether the exact same physical/mental/emotional entity is you or not depends on how those particles got there.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#272

Post by amanaplanacanal »

narag wrote: post #264
energy123 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anyone who supports both ideas at the same time. Are you saying that philosophers do? Most philosophers are materialists or computational functionalists, while being monists. This means they aren't dualists, and it means they do not adopt the supernatural explanation. But they are careful not to rule out dualism. There's this pattern I've observed in discussions about philosophy. First there's a rejectio…

I don't know anyone who supports both ideas at the same time. Are you saying that philosophers do? Every guy saying that free will doesn't exist is arguing exactly this. Physical causality considered an obstacle to freedom implies that the conscious entity is somehow outside the physical world.

You are implying that consciousness has to include free will? Why?

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#273

Post by don_esteban »

simiones wrote: post #178
don_esteban wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my question: Is our consciousness fundamentally different than a gorilla's? > If the answer is no, then I'd ask if a gorilla's consciousness is fundamentally different than a baboon's? I think that answer has to be no by definition, assuming the first answer is no. > And so on, until we get to where a human's consciousness is not fundamentally different than a tube worm, just a continuum of degrees. > I'm not…

The important point is that "not fundamentally different" is probably a transitive function. If A is not fundamentally different from B, and B is not fundamentally different from C, than A is not fundamentally different from C. Here A is human consciousness, B is gorilla consciousness, and C is baboon consciousness.

I disagree. Lets go over this slowly.

For almost all purposes, x + epsilon is not fundamentally different from x. Still, 1 is fundamentally different from 10^100, while you can get from 1 to 10^100 by adding epsilon.

Perhaps, one can argue that 0 is fundamentally different from 1. As in 0 + epsilon is fundamentally different from 0, for any non-zero epsilon (e.g. you can't divide by 0, but can for such epsilon).

I think both of us will agree that there is no fundamental difference between the consciousness of baboon and gorilla, and that there is a fundamental difference between the consciousness of a human and a bacteria.

Where we might differ is whether there is a fundamental difference between the consciousness of gorilla and human (some/many? think the humans are unique, and gorilla are not consciouss), and between the consciousness of baboon and a bacteria (maybe some believe 'all life has soul', including bacteria).

Where do you stand? Why do you think 'not fundamentally different' is transitive? Of course, if you apply it twice, the non-transitivity is not obvious. If you apply it 1000x, all the way to bacteria, its non-transitivity becomes obvious. Otherwise, you have to draw a sharp divide somewhere, between 'conscious' and 'non conscious', as in 'these two relatively closely related species are fundamentally different'.

The biggest biological gap I see between bacteria and human is probably between bacteria and eucaryotes, but somehow I doubt you would put the 'fundamentally different, consciousness-wise' there.

Btw., if that is not obvious, from my point of view, baboons are conscious. Not tothe level humans are, but sufficiently enough to make it obvious.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#274

Post by djokkataja »

Animats wrote: post #16

OK, dualism. Heard that before. The new hard problem: how do biological brains get so much done on such slow hardware? That's a real physics question. We're missing something.

> get so much done

Compared to what??

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#275

Post by taneq »

XorNot wrote: post #233
bambax wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never quite understood what we mean by "consciousness" but I find fascinating that most modern philosophers who describe themselves as materialists / non religious can argue in the same sentence that there is something special and extra-natural about the human experience. It's one or the other: either nature is all there is, and therefore, consciousness is a purely natural phenomenon, that we can investigate, and p…

"might as well call God" is a bizzare conclusion for the latter though because "God" is far from an abstract concept - it's probably one of the most heavily loaded terms in every human culture.

Overloaded, I’d say. There are many different definitions, most incompatible with each other, such that the term is almost meaningless without extensive preceding discussion.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#276

Post by taneq »

adwn wrote: post #223
bambax wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never quite understood what we mean by "consciousness" but I find fascinating that most modern philosophers who describe themselves as materialists / non religious can argue in the same sentence that there is something special and extra-natural about the human experience. It's one or the other: either nature is all there is, and therefore, consciousness is a purely natural phenomenon, that we can investigate, and p…

No, there is at least one other option, which is that consciousness [1] is a phenomenon that we can't replicate in non-biological brains [2], but from which the existence of a "God"-like being, as the term is understood by major religions, still doesn't follow. [1] Or "qualia", to be precise. [2] For example, the existence of qualia might require certain carbon-based structures which aren't present in silicon-based d…

Qualia are a begged question from the start, imo.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#277

Post by amanaplanacanal »

mikk14 wrote: post #263
energy123 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you are taking an opinionated view of the resolution to the Ship of Theseus paradox. If you are a computational functionalist, then it really is "you" afterwards (or rather there's now two identical "you" until the original "you" is destroyed). A monist could also point to your hypocrisy of believing that you are still your child self despite every atom in your body having been replaced between then and now.

A true monist would realize that any experience of the uploaded being that received a copy of the brain is not felt by the original brain that has been copied. This is a fact and it is elementary to see it as true, as well as supporting the view that the copy is not the same being at all. If your description of computation functionalists is accurate, then they simply are dualists and would do good in admitting this t…

Isn't continuity just an implementation detail? Suppose your brain was replaced a bit at a time with mechanical hardware, the end result is an uploaded mind while maintaining continuity.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#278

Post by funimpoded »

cortic wrote: post #235
adwn wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there is at least one other option, which is that consciousness [1] is a phenomenon that we can't replicate in non-biological brains [2], but from which the existence of a "God"-like being, as the term is understood by major religions, still doesn't follow. [1] Or "qualia", to be precise. [2] For example, the existence of qualia might require certain carbon-based structures which aren't present in silicon-based d…

There is nothing that we know of in carbon based structures that violates universal causality, even in quantum scales where causality becomes more vague it is replaced by a measurable randomness. So there should be no reason we cannot reduce these phenomena to actual quantifiable and there for Computable elements.

Computing something isn’t the same thing as it actually happening.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#279

Post by hackandthink »

n4r9 wrote: post #262
hackandthink wrote: post #103

Chalmers: “It is natural to hope that there will be a materialist solution to the hard problem and a reductive explanation of consciousness, just as there have been reductive explanations of many other phenomena in many other domains. But consciousness seems to resist materialist explanation in a way that other phenomena do not.” "A landscape of consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications" https…

Thanks for the reference, that looks like a pretty thorough review. It seems to me that Chalmers already precludes the possibility of physical/materialist explanations with his claim, quoted in the first section: > There is a logically possible world physically identical to ours, in which the positive facts about consciousness in our world do not hold. This certainly doesn't feel obvious or intuitive to me. I would e…

It is neither obvious nor intuitive. But it is logical possible that we all are Zombies.

In my regard the weak link is our understanding of materialism. It is to simple minded. (though panpsychism sounds really crank)

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#280

Post by RivieraKid »

Science will never be able to properly even define the concept of consciousness because it's outside the scope of science.

Consciousness is something that is used to observe the outer world and science essentially describes patterns in our observations.

All scientific laws boil down to subjective perceptions, such as, when I drop an apple, I see that it falls down.

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